Earlier this month, a non-existent bear named Ron did not attend an anti-vaccine rally. Neither the bear nor the rally in Hawthorne, Florida, were real, and Wendy Callahan, a local anti-vaccine activist, had no idea her name was being used by a person posing as her to file a permit for the rally. That person was a…

This world is full of surprises, some of them involving anti-vaccine activists, sedated bears, and the small-scale production of literal fake news. A couple of weeks ago, I thought I was working on a quick, weird story about an anti-vaccine activist in Florida who was attempting to hold a rally in her hometown…

We live in the glorious future that technophiles have long dreamed of. Almost everything can now connect to the internet: cameras, coffee pots, televisions, vacuums, toilets, children’s toys, sex toys. If you build it, a wireless connection will come for it. These smart devices are always on, always connected, and…

On October 27, 2009, the Ricketts family officially purchased a 95 percent ownership stake in the Chicago Cubs from the Tribune Company, bringing an end to a long, arduous, and complex sale process. Now, thanks to a cache of emails and documents obtained by Deadspin, more details from that process can be revealed than…

The Tia Clinic, a members-only doctor’s office that recently opened its first location in New York City, describes itself on Instagram as “part gyno’s office,” “part wellness center,” and “part lady fort.” Its office, near Madison Square Park, is rosy and speckled. Books by Simone de Beauvoir and Joan Didion are…

In the thousand years since Donald Trump sailed down an escalator and crash-landed with a wet thump in the Oval Office, a lot of Americans have changed, for good or ill. Many of us are more political or more cynical, impassioned or deflated, hopeful or entirely gutted. The time before this presidency can seem…

It was a pretty small amount of money Sharon Davis lost, which is typical. Davis is a professor of sociology at the University of La Verne in California, and as with many American workers who go to an office and sit at a desk as a member of the professional class, her employer-sponsored benefits included the chance to…

This past December, the New York Times ran a perfectly anodyne post promoting a new episode of The Daily, its popular podcast, and found itself mildly embarrassed. The problem wasn’t the actual substance of what it had published, a straightforward accounting of how the national-security establishment’s fixation on…

In November 2017, Vox published a story in which Glenn Thrush, then the White House correspondent for the New York Times, was accused of sexually inappropriate behavior towards female colleagues. Thrush, who’d been one of the most visible Times reporters in DC—he was frequently seen in the White House press briefing…

Gail Gygax and I were sitting in the living room of a lace-trimmed, flower-filled bed and breakfast in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin when she told me about the time she discovered what she believed was a plot to kill her.

When Georgia police arrested Thomas Cheung, a well-known Twitch streamer and World of Warcraft community figure, as part of a child sex sting two weeks ago, a common reaction among his friends, fans, and business associates was shock.